Background:
Hepatoid adenocarcinoma of the stomach (HAS) has been recognized as a rare primary gastric
tumor characterized by hepatocellular carcinoma-like histology. HAS often causes diagnostic confusion with conventional gastric adenocarcinoma (CGA) due to the difficulty to detect hepatoid differentiation solely based on findings from
hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining. Hence, HAS should be distinguished from solid-type CGA based on their different biological behaviors. β-catenin is highly expressed in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), which is involved in the
maintenance of tumor initiating cells, drug resistance, tumor progression, and metastasis.
Methods and Results:
Given the dearth of HAS cases, systematic examination of the expression of β-catenin in HAS
remains under-explored. In this study, 14 cases were subjected to immunostaining with with AFP, β-catenin, glypican3,
hepar-1 and CerbB-2. In parallel, the clinicopathological characteristics of these patients were collected. We detected
statistically significant difference in the expression of β-catenin (P = 0.000), glypican3 (P = 0.019), and hepar-1 (P =
0.007) between HAS cancer tissues and the adjacent non-cancerous tissues. Furthermore, a significant correlation was
observed between the expression of β-catenin in HAS cancer tissue and adjacent tissue (Pearson correlation coefficient:
0.686, P = 0.007). Moreover, in cancer tissues, a significant correlation was observed between the expression of β-catenin
and survival time (Spearman correlationcoefficient= - 0.482, P = 0.003). However, we found the expression of β-catenin
did not correlate with the degree of tumor differentiation and tumor size, age, gender, serum AFP levels, microinvasion,
and metastasis (P > 0.05).
Conclusion:
Our findings establish β-catenin as a useful marker that can distinguish HAS from CGA and may improve
the early diagnosis to guide the appropriate and timely treatment of HAS patients.
Clinicopathological Characteristics and Associated Factors of IgA Nephropathy Patients with Abnormal Circadian Blood Pressure
